


The Figgy Pudding Plot

by vanillafluffy



Category: The Mummy (1999), The Mummy Series
Genre: Christmas, Clever Evy, Gen, Pre-Canon, Pre-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-28
Updated: 2017-07-28
Packaged: 2018-12-07 21:57:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11632734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanillafluffy/pseuds/vanillafluffy
Summary: It's the Christmas after their parents' death, and if that isn't bad enough, they're being bullied by their soon-to-be-ex-landlord.





	The Figgy Pudding Plot

There’s a candle in the window of their shabby flat, and Jonathan has surreptitiously clipped some holly and ivy from the sprawl at Wingate Close. Evy has arranged it attractively in a battered enamelware bowl. Since Father’s death in August, staying afloat has become progressively harder. They need to relocate to cheaper lodgings--Jonathan’s found a suitable rooming house with connecting rooms--but it’s Christmas Eve, and this is still their home….

Without Papa’s books, the flat seems empty. Most of them were sold; that paid the rent this month. What remains are sentimental favorites, or those no dealer had been interested in--a hopelessly outdated set of encyclopedia or ponderous veterinary textbooks dealing with barnyard animals. 

Evy is reading _A Christmas Carol_ aloud as Mother used to do--had done just last year--when heavy footsteps clomp up the stairs. She pauses in the middle of one of Scrooge’s rants. Jonathan flinches as a fist pounds on their door. 

“Oy!” bellows their landlord. “I know you’re in there!” It’s no use pretending otherwise; Thigpen has a key, and wouldn’t hesitate to let himself in. 

Jonathan moves to open the door. Thigpen pushes past him, piggy eyes darting around the little room. “Word is, you’re leaving. Gonna have to charge you for the cleaning so I can get the next people in.” 

“Nonsense!” says Evy briskly. “I’ll leave everything perfectly tidy. And furthermore, we’ll be giving up most of our furniture, which you can sell or use for your new tenants. You'll be coming out ahead.” The rooming house provides beds, and there won't be room for much save a bureau.

“Make sure you get all this rubbish out of here,” he says, gesturing at the nearly empty bookcases. “And don’t think you’re going to sneak off with any of the fixtures--I’m going to check every scrap you take out of here!” Thigpen lumbers to the door. “I won’t be sorry to see the last of you fancy-pants Carnahans with your posh accents and snotty attitudes--sneering at a guy just ‘cause he can’t read. I hope you wind up on the streets!” With that last vindictive comment, he exits.

They’re silent until the thumping of his tread has retreated. Jonathan sinks slowly back into his chair. “Oh God,” he laments. “You know he’s going to pinch anything he wants if he gets his sticky fingers into our things.”

“Maybe not,” Evy says. The light in her eyes signals an idea. “He isn’t overly bright. He’s just handed us the weapon we need to defeat him.”

Jonathan blinks at her. “He has?”

Evy sets the Dickens aside and bounces up. She begins rummaging in the kitchen. A moment later she’s back with the biggest, sharpest kitchen knife they have. “You’ll need this,” she says, and tells her brother why. “Meanwhile, I’m going to mix up a big bowl of flour and water paste.”

“I’d rather have figgy pudding.” Jonathan sighs wistfully for the Christmas feasts of their childhood, but gets to work. 

Six days later, their belongings are at the curb--their scant furniture: a bureau, their smallest bookcase, open crates of books, spines up, trunks filled with clothes, linens and a few kitchen basics. For two adults, it’s a bit daunting to have so little, but they’ll get by. There are plenty of people who have less, Evy has said more than once while they were packing it up.

As promised, Thigpen inspects their baggage. Nothing is sacred; he paws through Evy’s delicates, chips carefully packed teacups, yanks the drawers out of the bureau and peers inside. He upends Evy’s knitting bag, dirtying four balls of yarn and a half-finished sweater. At last, he goes back inside, and they load everything onto the wagon Jonathan has hired in exchange for Papa’s pearl tie pin.

Evy and Jonathan spend their evening in their new rooms unpacking. As she'd predicted, Thigpen hadn’t touched the books, and not being able to read, he hadn’t wondered that Shakespeare was sharing a crate with _Dietary Causes of Skeletal Weaknesses and Deformities in Dairy Herds_ or _A Compendium of the Disorders Afflicting Ungulates_. After Jonathan hacked the centers out of the unloved volumes and Evy glued the bindings together with paste, they made clever hiding places. Now, wrenching them open, they divulge little family treasures they’d been afraid would fall into Thigpen’s clutches, their last defense against penury.

They exchange glances. Evy smiles. “Not as tasty as figgy pudding, but more useful, in the long run.”

 

…


End file.
